The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted (18 page)

The village was small, the kind to have only one of everything—one store, one café, one church, one school—all nestled amid a grid of only six or so main streets. The streets, steep and winding, were lined with tall, narrow row houses, interrupted occasionally by alleys of stone stairs. Built into the base of the mountain, it was a sturdy village, as if hunkered against stone. We wandered to a scenic overlook on
a hillside covered in lilacs. Beneath us was an expanse of farmland, rich earth, well tended.

“Do you smell that?” Charlotte asked. “It’s like I finally understand what all those scented candles want to be.”

Abbot had to pee, and so he found a hidden spot among the lilacs. He discovered the snails. “They’re everywhere! Look.”

We examined them closely—their long-stemmed eyes, the fragile swirls of their shells.

“Escargot,”
Charlotte said. “I know that one.”

We strolled up a side street, past the schoolyard and the church with its bell tower and row houses with steep front steps and colorful shutters, washed-out blues and greens. We passed a small fountain with a statue of a cherub holding a water jug. An old woman was scrubbing a marble bench.

And then we were heading downhill. We passed a sign that read
LES SARMENTS
. Up an alleyway of stone steps, there was the promise of a restaurant, hidden away somewhere.
Sarments
—I didn’t know what the word meant. I’d have to look it up.

We turned left, passing Café Sainte-Victoire. There were a few locals standing at the bar, a television mounted in the corner playing a French music video that had to have been produced in the eighties. Charlotte and Abbot dipped into the ice cream cooler and pulled out ice cream cones wrapped in thick paper. I ordered a coffee. We lingered by the tables in front of the shop as the waitress shuttled back and forth, handling the customers who sat on the raised,
shaded deck, eating late lunches. I remembered the bustle of this little hub not far from the square. The air was what felt most familiar—crisp and clear. I felt like my lungs were learning to breathe in a new way.

Next door was the Cocci market, a tight grocery store with a wall of produce and a half dozen rows of essentials. Abbot was obsessed with the Haribo candy stand, with its small pictures affixed to the flip-out windows. He wanted to pull all of the knobs and peer inside. But knobs? Touched by hundreds if not thousands of grimy kid hands before him?

He stood there with his hands in the pockets of his shorts. He’d stopped wearing his gym shorts a few weeks earlier, opting for shorts with pockets only. He glanced at me, but I pretended not to notice his dilemma and instead told him that I’d buy him one packet. “But that’s it, so choose wisely.”

Charlotte waltzed by. “Get the Gummi Fizzy Colas.”

He looked at Charlotte then at me. “I just had ice cream,” he said. “I’m not hungry.”

“You don’t eat candy because you’re hungry,” Charlotte said. “That’s a very basic rule of childhood. Are you an alien?”

She didn’t say it with any malice, but still Abbot looked at his shoes and shook his head. I knew that he felt like an alien sometimes.

“We’ll be back,” I said.

We bought simple necessities: bottled water, milk, Brie, crackers, strawberries, shampoo.

And that was it. That was the town. Simple. Lit up with afternoon light. As we walked back to the car, we noticed a
few gloomy clouds collecting overhead, a light, whipping wind. Still, the air was so clear and light, it felt otherworldly, as if some of the rules of gravity might not apply here.

As we piled back into the car, Charlotte said, “So, let’s give this another shot.”

“I’ll call Véronique,” I said, “to let her know we’re coming and maybe ask for a landmark or two.”

“Or six,” Abbot said.

I started the car and reached for my phone in the side pocket of the door. It was gone. “Where’s my phone?” I asked, then turned to Charlotte. “Maybe it’s in the camera bag or in with the laptop.”

Charlotte looked in the footwell and then twisted around to check out the backseat. “Where’s my camera bag?”

“Abbot,” I said. “Do you see the laptop bag?”

“No!” Abbot said anxiously.

We’d been robbed. The realization washed over me slowly. I popped the trunk and jumped out of the car, cursing vividly. Abbot’s suitcase and mine were gone. Charlotte had carried an Army-issue duffel bag that had been sitting in the backseat—gone, too. Plus all of our electronics—camera, laptop, Charlotte’s iPod.

“Wait,” Charlotte whispered, “my music!”

I thought of the two guys in the other Renault, stretching in their man capris, the two gay German tourists who probably weren’t gay or German or tourists, but ordinary thieves who’d followed our rental car off the highway. Their car was gone.

“It’s only stuff,” I said, trying to be calm. “They only stole things. It’s okay.”

But Abbot looked stricken—pale and stunned. “The dictionary,” he said. “The dictionary!”

“No,” I said, “we didn’t pack it, remember? It’s on your bedside table.”

He started crying uncontrollably. “I hate robbers,” he said. “I hate them! I hate them!”

“Yes,” I said. “But it’s okay. We’re all fine.”

Charlotte was furious. “I can’t believe it!”

“How did they get in the car? Did I not lock it? Is that possible?” It was possible, I realized in a sickening flash. I’d been so on guard in Paris, on the train, but here, in this little idyllic village, I’d let my guard down.

I looked around for witnesses. The old men playing bocce were too far away. The mother with the stroller and the boy on the bike were gone. But at a nearby bus stop, there was the group of shirtless boys who’d been scuffling around with a soccer ball earlier. They were staring at us, still scuffling.

I decided to start with them. Maybe they’d seen something.

Abbot was out of the car now, too, clinging to me, his arms wrapped around my waist. He was crying. “I packed important stuff,” he was saying. “Really important.”

Charlotte stepped out of the car, too. “It’s okay, Absterizer,” she said, but she looked shaken herself.

It had started raining, only lightly, but the kind of rain that could build into a fleeting summer storm.

I glanced at the group of boys again, not one of them older than thirteen. “I’m going to ask them if they saw anything.”

Just then, a boy, a little taller than the rest in filthy sneakers and flowered shorts, lifted a gun over his head and very slowly and methodically lowered it so that it was pointing right at us.

“Get in the car,” I said in a low, urgent voice. “Now.”

“What? It’s only rain,” Charlotte said, getting into the passenger’s seat and looking around.

I picked Abbot up by his armpits and threw him into the backseat, slamming the door. “Heads down!” I shouted as I jumped into the driver’s seat. My heart was hammering in my chest.

Charlotte and Abbot crouched low in their seats.

“What is it?” Abbot screamed.

“Nothing. Just keep your heads down.” I threw the car into reverse, peeled out, and then jammed the car into drive and drove off.

Charlotte and Abbot shrank down farther into the foot-wells.

Charlotte said, “I saw it. I saw it, too.”

“Saw what?” Abbot cried.

“I can’t die,” Charlotte whispered. “I can’t. Not yet.”

I was thinking now only of how to get away, how to push the car as fast as it could go, how to put as much distance as possible between the gun and us. The robbery was nothing now. My hands gripped the wheel. I leaned into the windshield and gunned the gas. The rain had picked up and was
now drumming down on the car’s roof. My head was full of noise. I drove the cramped roads, the wipers beating back and forth. I could barely see through the windshield. It had been raining on the morning Henry died; fog had rolled onto the highway. I turned on the headlights. The road was a blur.

“I’ve got my phone!” Charlotte said triumphantly, pulling out her cell phone from one of her many pockets and handing it to me.

I glanced at it—forty-one missed calls. Forty-one? I flipped it open and dialed 911. It was the only thing I could think of. It started ringing. I felt relieved. “It’s 911! It works!” I slowed down a little.

And then an officer answered in French. Well, of course. Had I been expecting English? I suppose I had.

“Bonjour!” I said, reverting to primary French. I told the officer, in short, declarative French sentences, that I was in Puyloubier, that we’d been … 
violated
, then I said, no, not violated.
Robbed
. The two words are similar in French, but one means “raped,” the other “robbed.” The car was robbed, I told him. And then I said, “Je suis Américaine.” I don’t know why this seemed crucial. Did I expect someone to call the American embassy? I told him that there was a boy with a gun.

“Non, non.” He laughed and then corrected me. The words for
gun
and
rocket
are also similar.

“Oui! Correct!” I said that it was a boy with a gun. Not a rocket.

An oncoming car came at me down the narrow road and
I swerved. The Renault stalled out on a shoulder of high weeds.

The officer said he would put me through to someone at the station in Trets, someone who spoke English.

The rain was so loud now that I could barely hear the officer’s voice. I was losing reception. I got out of the car, pacing in one direction and then another. I hunched over, trying to keep the phone dry.

And then a man’s voice came on the line and spoke to me in English. “Yes. Can I help you?”

The phone beeped that it was running low on batteries. It was going to die. Charlotte’s charger had been in the computer bag. The computer bag that was now gone.

I explained what had happened, as quickly as I could.

The officer was very calm—
tranquil
, as the French would say. “The gun probably wasn’t real. They’re illegal here. Children have fake guns. It was probably, how do you say? A joke.”

“Where I come from, guns aren’t funny,” I said, near hysteria.

“Well, no,” the officer said. “Where you come from, the people shoot each other.”

I wasn’t sure how to take this, but I was insulted—although it was true. “We’re staying in the house next to Véronique Dumonteil’s bed and breakfast. My family owns this house.”

“Yes. I know the house you’re telling me. Listen, the thieves sometimes leave the non-valuables by the road. I will send someone to look. You must make a report at the station in Trets.” Trets was the closest good-sized town. I knew it
well. We’d gone there sometimes as kids for the attraction of the larger grocery store. The village of Puyloubier was too small to have its own police station.

“Today?” I asked.

“No, no,” he said. “Tomorrow is fine. Rest. Be calm.”

I got back in the car, soaking wet, humbled. “The gun was a fake,” I said. “That’s what the cop said.” This was no comfort. My head felt like it was filled with air. My chest felt swollen and my breaths became shallow.

“What gun?” Abbot said.

“The fake one,” Charlotte said. “They were just kids in flowered shorts with a fake gun.”

“They could have been in a gang,” I said.

“It’s absolutely possible that gang members in the South of France wear flowered shorts,” Charlotte said.

I turned the key in the ignition. The engine sputtered then died. I slammed my fist on the steering wheel and tried it again. The engine coughed then nothing. I imagined Henry, standing on the shore while calling to Abbot and me in the ocean,
Too far, too far!
This was when I started to cry.

“What if we’re stuck here and the robbers find us and want to shoot us?” Abbot, still shaken and sniffling, said from the footwell in the backseat.

“I can’t breathe,” I said. “Roll down the windows.”

“It’s still pouring,” Charlotte said.

“It’s a rental!” I shouted. “Get up off the floor, Abbot! It was a fake gun!”

“We don’t have to panic,” Charlotte said, calmly now.
Abbot kneeled on his seat, his forehead pressed against the window, trying to see out. “We’re in a car in the South of France. The robbers are gone. No one is coming after us. It was a fake gun! Everything is fine!”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Henry would have known what to do. Henry would have saved us. But he was gone. All of our things were gone. “What am I doing here?” I said. “What in the hell am I doing here?”

“Call Véronique,” Charlotte said. “That’s what you were going to do before.”

I looked at Charlotte. Her eyes were clear and bright. She was focused. She was good in an emergency. Charlotte! “Right,” I said. I dug the phone number scribbled onto a little piece of paper out of my pocket. I dialed. The phone rang. I was expecting Véronique, but it wasn’t her voice. Did I have the wrong number? “Allô?” I muttered.

Charlotte took the phone. “We’re looking for Véronique Dumonteil,” she said, then listened. She cupped her hand over the receiver. “Yes, yes. Thank you.” Charlotte explained that the car had died, where we were, and then said, “Mm-hmm, okay, blue. Thank you.” She shut the phone. “Someone’s coming,” she said, rolling up the window.

“Why blue?” I asked.

“What?”

“You told them blue. Why?”

“The color of the car,” she said. “It sounded like a party was going on in the background.”

“A party?” I said. “We just got robbed!”

“I don’t think the party’s for us,” she said. “No correlation. Are you going to be okay?” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “Probably not.”

The rain kept pounding the car. We sat there in silence, except that Abbot was still crying a little, and the car filled with steam that fogged the windows.

Eventually, a sporty convertible came racing toward us in the rain. The top was down. A man was behind the wheel. He pulled off the road and headed right at us. He stopped just short of hitting us and parked the cars nose to nose. “Jesus!” I said.

Since the convertible lid was down, he put his hand on the top of the windshield, the wipers still batting back and forth, and pulled himself up to sit on the top of the seat, then rubbed the rain back into his dark hair with his free hand. He waved.